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Thank you Ann-Katrin. It was a pleasure to host the meeting in London to discuss the media development toolkit.
I wanted to comment on your analyis that Europeans are more comfortable than Americans with the notion of long term subsidy of the media. I largely agree, although I think the dynamics of why this is are changing.
I've been slightly sceptical of the view, reiterated over many years (although not by you in your post), that Europeans favour a public service broadcasting model and the US a commercial model. Apart from anything else it rather suggests that developing country or emerging economy societies themselves - who might ideally be expected to have quite strong views on this issue - are rather at the mercy of a whole bunch of external actors intent on foisting their own models on them. I think the notion of country or region defined strategies have become more influential in recent years, and certainly the reality of major strategic exercises like the Strengthening African Media Initiative (STREAM)/Africa Media Development Initiative, and the emergence of democratic and decentralised networks like the Global Forum for Media Development, suggest that simply choosing between two Western models is far from what developing country media actors want to do. I suspect they want their own models, or mix of models, tailored to their own circumstances. Looking at the work of the BBC World Service Trust, which I have relatively recently joined, I've been a little surprised that relatively little of the work of the Trust is focused on supporting a public service model (although it's increasing again now).
That being said, I think there is a growing focus on long term subsidy in Europe, not least because the sustainability of the private media in the West is in such doubt, and because the performance of public service media - such as the BBC - has been so strong in recent years.
Clearly sustainability is a central factor and my suggestion is that we look at it in a slightly different way and I have outlined some ideas on a blog posted last week - this was in part inspired by some of the conversations we had at our media development toolkit meeting in London. It can be found here: http://www.comminit.com/en/node/298474/bbc.
All best
James Deane
Head of Policy
BBC World Service Trust